Waifs and Strays Part I......................................................................................................................................1

O Henry ....................................................................................................................................................1

A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south bound from San Antonio was cut off for the

Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it,

returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he

had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the ranch again.

Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the afterchurch parade on Fifth

Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meetinghouse at Cactus, Tex., a

mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth Easter

blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a

mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia Weaver's Easter hat

blushed unseen in the desert air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon the

Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the AnchorO, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida,

from Green Valley, would convene at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks

carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation would then merrily jog the ten miles to

Cactus, where on the morrow they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause

Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite.

She displayed a frown and a contumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and

"I hate railroads," she announced positively. "And men. Men pretend to run them. Can you give any excuse

why a trestle should burn? Ida Bennet's hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step toward

Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was Wells Pearson, foreman of the

Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana

Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at railroads and menaced men.

Either would have given up his epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives

up his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying

the sad deficiency against the coming Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him

the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight

grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from

somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by woman's presence.

"The big waterhole on Sandy Creek," said Pearson, scarcely hoping to make a hit, "was filled up by that last

"Oh! Was it?" said Tonia sharply. "Thank you for the information. I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr.

Pearson. I suppose you think a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you do. If

your old waterhole could have put out the fire on that trestle you might have some reason to talk about it."

"I am deeply sorry," said Burrows, warned by Pearson's fate, "that you failed to receive your hat, Miss

"Don't bother," interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. "If there was anything you could do, you'd be doing it,

Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown smoothed away. She had an

"There's a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces," she said, "that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers

there. She said it was the latest style. It might have some left. But it's twentyeight miles to Lone Elm."

The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost smiled. The Knights, then, were not all

"Of course," said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud sailing across the cerulean dome, "nobody

could ride to Lone Elm and back by the time the girls call by for me tomorrow. So, I reckon I'll have to stay

"Well, Miss Tonia," said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as a sleeping babe. "I reckon I'll be trotting

along back to Mucho Calor. There's some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the morning;

and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It's too bad your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they'll get that

"I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia," announced Burrows, looking at his watch. "I declare, it's nearly five

o'clock! I must be out at my lambing camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes."

Tonia's suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They bade her a ceremonious farewell, and

then shook each other's hands with the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner.

"Same here," said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose friend goes upon a whaling voyage. "Be

gratified to see you ride over to Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range."

Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cowpony on the Frio, and let him pitch for a minute, as he

"What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia," he called, "that you ordered from San Antone? I can't help but be

"A straw," said Tonia; "the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red roses. That's what I likered roses."

"There's no color more becoming to your complexion and hair," said Burrows, admiringly.

"It's what I like," said Tonia. "And of all the flowers, give me red roses. Keep all the pinks and blues for

yourself. But what's the use, when trestles burn and leave you without anything? It'll be a dry old Easter for

Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Bunner at a gallop into the chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch

As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's longlegged sorrel struck out down the narrow stretch of

"Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia, coolly. "I'll have a new hat, all right, in time tomorrow."

When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his sorrel to the right and let him pick his way

daintily across a sacuista flat through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly hill,

matted with bush, the hoarse scrambled, and at length emerged, with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of

high, level prairie, grassy and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring foliage. Always

to the right Burrows bore, until in a little while he struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces

southward, and that passed, twentyeight miles to the southeast, through Lone Elm.

Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself in the saddle for a long ride he heard

the drumming of hoofs, the hollow "thwack" of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a Comanche;

and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark

Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in Pearson's bosom. In Tonia's

presence his voice was as soft as a summer bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a

"Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven't you, neighbor?" asked Pearson, as Road

"Twentyeight miles," said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson's laugh woke an owl one hour too early in

"All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We're two locoed hemilliners hathunting in the

wilderness. I notify you. Burr, to mind your corrals. We've got an even start, and the one that gets the

"You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner's barrel like body and tapering legs that

moved as regularly as the pistonrod of an engine. "It's a race, of course; but you're too much of a horseman to

"I'm your company," agreed Pearson, "and I admire your sense. If there's hats at Lone Elm, one of 'em shall

set on Miss Tonia's brow tomorrow, and you won't be at the crowning. I ain't bragging, Burr, but that sorrel

"My horse against yours," offered Burrows, "that Miss Tonia wears the hat I take her to Cactus tomorrow."

"I'll take you up," shouted Pearson. "But oh, it's just like horse stealing for me! I can use that sorrel for a

Burrows' dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his sentence. But Pearson could never

"What's all this Easter business about, Burr?" he asked, cheerfully. "Why do the women folks have to have

"It's a seasonable statute out of the testaments," explained Burrows. "It's ordered by the Pope or somebody.

And it has something to do with the Zodiac I don't know exactly, but I think it was invented by the

"It's an allright jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it," said Pearson; "or else Tonia wouldn't have

anything to do with it. And they pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain't but one hat in the Lone Elm

"Then," said Burrows, darkly, "the best man of us'll take it back to the Espinosa."

"Oh, man!" cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again, "there's nothing like you come off the

sheep ranges before. You talk good and collateral to the occasion. And if there's more than one?"

"Then," said Burrows, "we'll pick our choice and one of us'll get back first with his and the other won't."

"There never was two souls," proclaimed Pearson to the stars, "that beat more like one heart than yourn and

mine. Me and you might be riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind."

At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a hundred houses of the big village were

In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding cheerfully on the door of old Sutton,

The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window shutter followed by a short inquiry.

"Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley," was the response. "We want to buy

some goods in the store. Sorry to wake you up but we must have 'em. Come on out, Vncle Tommy, and get a

Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got him behind his counter with a kerosene lamp lit, and told him

"Easter hats?" said Uncle Tommy, sleepily. "Why, yes, I believe I have got just a couple left. I only ordered a

Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half asleep or awake. In dusty pasteboard boxes under the

counter he had two leftover spring hats. But, alas! for his commercial probity on that early Saturday

mornthey were hats of two springs ago, and a woman's eye would have detected the fraud at half a glance.

But to the unintelligent gaze of the cowpuncher and the sheepman they seemed fresh from the mint of

The hats were of a variety once known as "cartwheels." They were of stiff straw, colored red, and flat

brimmed. Both were exactly alike, and trimmed lavishly around their crowns with full blown, immaculate,

"That all you got, Uncle Tommy?" said Pearson. "All right. Not much choice here, Burr. Take your pick."

"They're the latest styles" lied Uncle Tommy. "You'd see 'em on Fifth Avenue, if you was in New York."

Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two yards of dark calico for a protection. One Pearson tied

carefully to his calfskin saddle thongs; and the other became part of Road Runner's burden. They shouted

thanks and farewells to Uncle Tommy, and cantered back into the night on the home stretch.

The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They rode more slowly on their way back. The few words they

spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows had a Winchester under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. Pearson

At halfpast seven in the morning they rode to the top of a hill and saw the Espinosa Ranch, a white spot

The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose in the saddle. He knew what Road Runner could do. The

sorrel was lathered, and stumbling frequently; Road Runner was pegging away like a donkey engine.

Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed. "Goodbye, Burr," he cried, with a wave of his hand. "It's

He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned toward the Espinosa. Road Runner struck into a gallop,

with tossing head and snorting nostrils, as if he were fresh from a month in pasture.

Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the unmistakable sound of a Winchester lever throwing a cartridge into

the barrel. He dropped flat along his horse's back before the crack of the rifle reached his ears.

It is possible that Burrows intended only to disable the horse he was a good enough shot to do that without

endangering his rider. But as Pearson stooped the ball went through his shoulder and then through Road

Runner's neck. The horse fell and the cowman pitched over his head into the hard road, and neither of them

In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took inventory. He managed to get to his feet and staggered back to

Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to be comfortable. Pearson examined him and found that the

bullet had "creased" him. He had been knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. But he was tired, and

he lay there on Miss Tonia's hat and ate leaves from a mesquite branch that obligingly hung over the road.

Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, loosed from the saddlethongs, lay there in its calico

wrappings, a shapeless thing from its sojourn beneath the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson fainted

and fell head long upon the poor hat again, crumpling it under his wounded shoulders.

It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour he revivedlong enough for a woman to have fainted twice

and tried icecream for a restorer. He got up carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with the

nearby grass. He tied the unfortunate hat to the saddle again, and managed to get himself there, too, after

At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in front of the Espinosa Ranch. The Rogers girls were there in

their new buckboard, and the AnchorO outfit and the Green Valley folksmostly women. And each and

every one wore her new Easter hat, even upon the lonely prairies, for they greatly desired to shine forth and

At the gate stood Tonia. with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In her hand she held Burrow's Lone Elm hat,

and it was at its white roses, hated by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the ecstatic joy

of true friends, that cartwheels could not be worn, being three seasons passed into oblivion.

The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style of spring's latest proclamation.

A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his horse languidly. He was stained and

"Hallo, Pearson," said Daddy Weaver. "Look like you've been breaking a mustang. What's that you've got

"Oh, come on, Tonia, if you're going," said Betty Rogers. "We mustn't wait any longer. We've saved a seat in

the buckboard for you. Never mind the hat. That lovely muslin you've got on looks sweet enough with any

Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked at him with a sudden hope. Pearson

was a man who created hope. He got the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the strings.

"Best I could do," said Pearson slowly. "What Road Runner and me done to it will be about all it needs."

"Oh, oh! it's just the right shape," shrieked Tonia. "And red roses! Wait till I try it on!"

"Thank you, thank you, Wells," she said, happily. "It's just what I wanted. Won't you come over to Cactus

"If I can," said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then he grinned weakly.

"What have you been doing, Pearson?" asked Daddy Weaver. "You ain't looking so well as common."

"Me?" said Pearson. "I've been painting flowers. Them roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help me down,

[This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of the theme afterward developed with a

"Find yo' shirt all right, Sam?" asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair under the liveoak, where she was

"It balances perfeckly, Marthy," answered Sam, with a suspicious pleasantness in his tone. "At first I was

about ter be a little reckless and kick 'cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver that the button holes

is all busted out, why, I wouldn't go so fur as to say the buttons is any loss to speak of."

"Oh, well," said his wife, carelessly, "put on your necktiethat'll keep it together."

Sam Webber's sheep ranch was situated in the loneliest part of the country between the Nueces and the Frio.

The ranch housea tworoom box structurewas on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a

wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where stood the sheep pens, shearing shed,

Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch to see about buying some more improved merino rams. At

length he came out, ready for his ride. This being a business trip of some importance, and the Chapman ranch

being almost a small town in population and size, Sam had decided to "dress up" accordingly. The result was

that he had transformed himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into something much less pleasing

to the sight. The tight white collar awkwardly constricted his muscular, mahoganycolored neck. The

buttonless shirt bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The suit of "readymade" effectually

concealed the fine lines of his straight, athletic figure. His berrybrown face was set to the melancholy

dignity befitting a prisoner of state. He gave Randy, his threeyearold son, a pat on the head, and hurried

Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her place in the book with her finger, and turned her head,

smiling mischievously as she noted the havoc Sam had wrought with his appearance in trying to "fix up."

~Well, ef I must say it, Sam," she drawled, "you look jest like one of them hayseeds in the picture papers,

"You're the one ought to be 'shamed to say so," he replied hotly. "'Stead of 'tendin' to a man's clothes you're

"Oh, shet up and ride along," said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk at the handles of her chair; "you always

fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do aplenty; and I'll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a varmint,

never seein' nor hearin' nothin', and what other 'musement kin I have? Not in listenin' to you talk, for it's

complain, complain, one day after another. Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace."

Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and "shoved" down the wagon trail that connected his ranch with

the old, open Government road. It was eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should have

started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen miles away, but there was a road for only three

miles of the distance. He had ridden over there once with one of the HalfMoon cowpunchers, and he had the

Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla.

Here was a narrow stretch of smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite grass; and

Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long, easy lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck

Waterhole, must he abandon welldefined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill, pebblecovered,

upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to

take his last general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through brakes and thickets of

chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction,

choosing his way by the prairiedweller's instinct, guided only by an occasional glimpse of a far distant

Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that lies between the Quintanilla and the

In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual confusion of mind and the hurry to

get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous

labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness of the route had failed his horse had divined the

fact. There were no hills now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came upon a few,

but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in the

It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a day or a night. The thing often happened.

It was merely a matter of missing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets on a soft

mattress of mesquite grass. But in Sam's case it was different. He had never been away from his ranch at

night. Marthy was afraid of the countryafraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even of sheep. So he

It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam's conscience awoke. He was limp and drenched,

rather from anxiety than the heat or fatigue. Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to the

Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at some dim part of it and ridden beyond. If so

he was now something like fifty miles from home. If he could strike a ranch a campany place where he

could get a fresh horse and inquire the road, he would ride all night to get back to Marthy and the kid.

So, I have hinted, Sam was seized bv remorse. There was a big lump in his throat as he thought of the cross

words he had spoken to his wife. Surely it was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country witnout

having to bear the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself grimly, and felt a sudden flush of shame that

overglowed the summer heat as he remembered the many times he had flouted and railed at her because she

"Ther only so'ce ov amusement ther po' gal's got," said Sam aloud, with a sob, which unaccustomed sound

caused Mexico to shy a bit. Alivin with a soreheaded kiote like mea lowdown skunk that ought to be

licked to death with a saddle cinchacookin' and awashin' and alivin' on mutton and beans and me

He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in Dogtownsmart, pretty, and saucybefore

the sun had turned the roses in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her ambitions.

"Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal," muttered Sam, "or fails in the love and affection that's

He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia Jones, his San Antonio merchants where he bought his

supplies and sold his wool, and have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy.

Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of

In nowise calculated to allay his selfreproach was the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to pass

the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the

country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of peaceful content and dependence. And were

her fears so groundless? Sam thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that sometimes

invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with

Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after

slopeall exactly alike all familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could only

The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward man is more an artificial product than a

diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints have

attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes frequently wind up at their startingpoint.

It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves that Mexico, with a heavy sigh,

subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a slow complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope

"I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're plumb tired out, but we got ter git along.

Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo' houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels.

Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: "What's the use of that, now we're so near?" He quickened his

gait into a languid trot. Rounding a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam dropped the bridle

Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rockingchair before the door in the shade of the house, with her

feet resting luxuriously upon the steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground, looked up

for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels and singing a little song. Marthy turned her head

lazily against the back of the chair and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes. She held a book in her

Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and slowly dismounted. He moistened his dry

"I see you are still asettin'," he said, "areadin' of them billy bydam yallerback novils."

We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the decorations of a

WaldorfAstoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre. I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we were

raised by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30cent table d'hote stalk of asparagus. You take a white bulldog

with a Bourke Cockran air of independence about him and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and

flora of a flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the dweller in flats and furnished rooms.

We get moved from one place to another so quickly that the only way we can get our picture taken is with a

kinetoscope. We are the vagrant vine and the flitting fig tree. You know the proverb: "Where the rubber plant

We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and the honeysuckle. No other vegetable except the Pittsburg

stogie can withstand as much handling as we can. When the family to which we belong moves into a flat they

set us in the front window and we become lares and penates, flypaper and the peripatetic emblem of "Home

Sweet Home." We aren't as green as we look. I guess we are about what you would call the soubrettes of the

conservatory. You try sitting in the front window of a $40 flat in Manhattan and looking out into the street all

day, and back into the flat at night, and see whether you get wise or nothey? Talk about the tree of

knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Edensay! suppose there had been a rubber plant there when

The first thing I can remember I had only three leaves and belonged to a member of the pony ballet. I was

kept in a sunny window, and was generally watered with seltzer and lemon. I had plenty of fun in those days.

I got crosseyed trying to watch the numbers of the automobiles in the street and the dates on the labels

Well, then the angel that was molting for the musical comedy lost his last feather and the company broke up.

The ponies trotted away and I was left in the window ownerless. The janitor gave me to a refined comedy

team on the eighth floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the window of five different flats I took on

Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy teamdid you ever see her cross both feet back of her neck?gave

me to a friend of hers who had made an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was

placed in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas extra after ten o'clock at

night. Two of my leaves withered off here. Also, I was moved from one room to another so many times that I

I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady. There was never anything amusing going on

insideshe was devoted to her husband, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the iceman,

When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at a secondhand store. I was put out in

front for sale along with the jobbiest lot you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. Think of this little

cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James's works, six talking machine records, one pair of tennis

One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me. She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked slim,

She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and fingers over some small silver in it. Old

Koen, always on the lockout, is ready, rubbing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. James and the

other commodities. Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of her song. And at last Koen and she come

She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet and sober looking. Thinks I to myself: "I'll just about land on

the fireescape of a tenement, six stories up. And I'll spend the next six months looking at clothes on the

But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite a decent street. And she put me in the

window, of course. And then she went to work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you suppose she

had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else. Not a single lobster, nor so much as one bottle of

champagne. The Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, except now and then when they took a

After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window and leaned down close to my leaves

and cried softly to herself for a while. It made me feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry that way over a

rubber plant before. Of course, I've seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what they could get out of it, but

she seemed to be crying just for the pure enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves like she loved 'em, and she

bent down her head and kissed each one of 'em. I guess I'm about the toughest specimen of a peripatetic

orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. Home never was like that to me before. Generally

I used to get chewed by poodles and have shirtwaists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee

This girl had a piano in the room, and she used to disturb it with both hands while she made noises with her

One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock. At eleven somebody knocked and she

let in a stout, dark man with towsled black hair. He sat down at once at the piano and played while she sang

for him. When she finished she laid one hand on her bosom and looked at him. He shook his head, and she

leaned against the piano. "Two years already," she said, speaking slowly"do you think in two moreor

The man shook his head again. "You waste your time," he said, roughly I thought. "The voice is not there."

And then he looked at her in a peculiar way. "But the voice is not everything," he went on. "You have looks. I

The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark man left the room. And then she came over

and cried around me again. It's a good thing I had enough rubber in me to be waterproof.

About that time somebody else knocked at the door. "Thank goodness," I said to myself. "Here's a chance to

get the waterworks turned off. I hope it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird and a bottle to liven

things up a little." Tell you the truth, this little girl made me tired. A rubber plant likes to see a little sport now

and then. I don't suppose there's another green thing in New York that sees as much of gay life unless it's the

When the girl opens the door in steps a young chap in a traveling cap and picks her up in his arms, and she

sings out "Oh, Dick!" and stays there long enough towell, you've been a rubber plant too, sometimes, I

"Good thing!" says I to myself. "This is livelier than scales and weeping. Now there'll be something doing."

"You've got to go back with me," says the young man. "I've come two thousand miles for you. Aren't you

tired of it yet. Bess? You've kept all of us waiting so long. Haven't you found out yet what is best?"

"The bubble burst only today," says the girl. "Come here, Dick, and see what I found the other day on the

sidewalk for sale." She brings him by the hand and exhibits yours truly. "How one ever got away up here who

He looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off her for more than a second. "Do you remember the night,

Bess," he said, "when we stood under one of those on the bank of the bayou and what you told me then?"

"Geewillikins!" I said to myself. "Both of them stand under a rubber plant! Seems to me they are stretching

"Do I not," says she, looking up at him and sneaking close to his vest, "and now I say it again, and it is to last

forever. Look, Dick, at its leaves, how wet they are. Those are my tears, and it was thinking of you that made

"The dear old magnolias!" says the young man, pinching one of my leaves. "I love them all."

Magnolia! Well, wouldn't thatsay! those innocents thought I was a magnolia! What thewell, wasn't that

Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a "wad." Okochee came out of it

with a halfmilliondollar debt, a two and a half per cent. city property tax, and a city council that showed a

propensity for traveling the back streets of the town. These things came about through a fatal resemblance of

the river Cooloosa to the Hudson, as set forth and expounded by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New

York should not be allowed to consider itself the only alligator in the swamp, so to speak. And then that

harmless, but persistent, individual so numerous in the Souththe man who is always clamoring for more

cotton mills, and is ready to take a dollar's worth of stock, provided he can borrow the dollarthat man

The Cooloosa River winds through a range of small mountains, passes Okochee and then blends its waters

Okochee rose, as it were, from its sunny seat on the postoffice stoop, hitched up its suspender, and threw a

granite dam two hundred and forty feet long and sixty feet high across the Cooloosa one mile above the town.

Thereupon, a dimpling, sparkling lake backed up twenty miles among the little mountains. Thus in the great

game of municipal rivalry did Okochee match that famous drawing card, the Hudson. It was conceded that

nowhere could the Palisades be judged superior in the way of scenery and grandeur. Following the picture

card was played the ace of commercial importance. Fourteen thousand horsepower would this dam furnish.

Cotton mills, factories, and manufacturing plants would rise up as the green corn after a shower. The spindle

and the flywheel and turbine would sing the shrewd glory of Okochee. Along the picturesque heights above

the lake would rise in beauty the costly villas and the splendid summer residences of capital. The naphtha

launch of the millionaire would spit among the romantic coves; the verdured hills would take formal shapes

of terrace, lawn, and park. Money would be spent like water in Okochee, and water would be turned into

The fate of the good town is quickly told. Capital decided not to invest. Of all the great things promised, the

scenery alone came to fulfilment. The wooded peaks, the impressive promontories of solemn granite, the

beautiful green slants of bank and ravine did all they could to reconcile Okochee to the delinquency of

miserly gold. The sunsets gilded the dreamy draws and coves with a minting that should charm away

heartburning. Okochee, true to the instinct of its blood and clime, was lulled by the spell. It climbed out of

the arena, loosed its suspender, sat down again on the postoffice stoop, and took a chew. It consoled itself

by drawling sarcasms at the city council which was not to blame, causing the fathers, as has been said, to seek

back streets and figure perspiringly on the sinking fund and the appropriation for interest due.

The youth of Okocheethey who were to carry into the rosy future the burden of the debtaccepted failure

with youth's uncalculating joy. For, here was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre round of life's

pleasures. In yachting caps and flowing neckties they pervaded the lake to its limits. Girls wore silk waists

embroidered with anchors in blue and pink. The trousers of the young men widened at the bottom, and their

hands were proudly calloused by the oft plied oar. Fishermen were under the spell of a deep and tolerant

Jjoy. Sailboats and rowboats furrowed the lenient waves, popcorn and ice cream booths sprang up about the

little wooden pier. Two small excursion steamboats were built, and plied the delectable waters. Okochee

philosophically gave up the hope of eating turtle soup with a gold spoon, and settled back, not ill content, to

its regular diet of lotus and fried hominy. And out of this slow wreck of great expectations rose up J. Pinkney

Needless to say J. Pinkney was no product of Georgia soil. He came out of that flushed and capable region

known as the "North." He called himself a "promoter"; his enemies had spoken of him as a "grafter";

Okochee took a middle course, and held him to be no better nor no worse than a "Yank."

Far up the lakeeighteen miles above the townthe eye of this cheerful campfollower of booms had spied

out a graft. He purchased there a precipitous tract of five hundred acres at fortyfive cents per acre; and this

he laid out and subdivided as the city of Skyland the Queen City of the Switzerland of the South. Streets

and avenues were surveyed; parks designed; corners of central squares reserved for the "proposed" opera

house, board of trade, lyceum, market, public schools, and "Exposition Hall." The price of lots ranged from

five to five hundred dollars. Positively, no lot would be priced higher than five hundred dollars.

While the boom was growing in Okochee, J. Pinkney's circulars, maps, and prospectuses were flying through

the mails to every part of the country. Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate

Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, at the price, on

hand that day. All this time the catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade, the

opossum swung by his tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to

his audience of young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money was coming in fast, J. Pinkney

caused to be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box houses, and persuaded a contingent of

indigent natives to occupy them, thereby assuming the role of "poulation" in subsequent prospectuses, which

So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait and nursing its two and a half per cent.

tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of checks and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped about

his fiftytwoinch waist a soft leather belt containing eight thousand dollars in big bills, and said that all was

One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad fields. Skyland was a regular

postoffice, and the steamboat, ~Dixie Belle~, under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice

a week. There was a little business there to be settled the postmaster was to be paid off for his light but

lonely services, and the "inhabitants" had to be furnished with another month's homely rations, as per

agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous,

barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they might leave them to

their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was

The little steamboat ~Dixie Belle~ was about to shove off on her regular upthelake trip, when a rickety

hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously

but vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the schedule of the ~Dixie Belle~;

Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of

the tall, elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a gray curl depending

Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pinkney Bloom, who was the only other

passenger, that it should be his to play the part of host to the boat's new guests, who were, doubtless, on a

sceneryviewing expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent, childcandid smile upon his fresh,

pink countenance, with that air of unaffected sincerity that was redeemed from bluffness only by its exquisite

calculation, with that promptitude and masterly decision of manner that so well suited his callingwith all

his stock in trade well to the front; he stepped forward to receive Colonel and Mrs. Peyton Blaylock. With the

grace of a grand marshal or a wedding usher, he escorted the two passengers to a side of the upper deck, from

which the scenery was supposed to present itself to the observer in increased quantity and quality. There, in

comfortable steamer chairs, they sat and began to piece together the random lines that were to form an

"Our home, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, removing his widebrimmed, rather shapeless black felt hat, "is in

Holly SpringsHolly Springs, Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. Mrs.

Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on businessbusiness of importance in

connection with the recent rapid march of progress in this section of our state."

The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth, locks. His dark eyes, still fiery under

the heavy black brows, seemed inappropriate to the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old

courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and reattired in a modern suit of fine, but raveling and

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest prospectus voice, "things have been whizzing around Okochee.

Biggest industrial revival and waking up to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you happen to squeeze in

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, hesitating in courteous doubt, "if I understand your question, I may say that I

took the opportunity to make an investment that I believe will prove quite advantageousyes, sir, I believe it

"Colonel Blaylock," said the little edlerly lady, shaking her gray curl and smiling indulgent explanation at J.

Pinkney Bloom, "is so devoted to businesss. He has such a talent for financiering and markets and

investments and those kind of things. I think myself extremely fortunate in having secured him for a partner

on life's journeyI am so unversed in those formidable but very useful branches of learning."

Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bowa bow that belonged with silk stockings and lace ruffles and velvet.

"Practical affairs," he said, with a wave of his hand toward the promoter, "are, if I may use the comparison,

the garden walks upon which we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers which brighten

that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out a walk or two. Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate

higher spirits whose mission it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr. Bloom, you have perused the lines

of Lorella, the Southern poetess. That is the name above which Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press of

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly written upon his frank face, "I'm like the

Colonelin the walkmaking business myselfand I haven't had time to even take a sniff at the flowers.

"It is the region," smiled Mrs. Blaylock, "in which my soul dwells. My shawl, Peyton, if you pleasethe

The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of knitted silk and laid it solicitously about

the shoulders of the lady. Mrs. Blaylock sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes still as clear

and unworldly as a child'supon the steep slopes that were slowly slipping past. Very fair and stately they

looked in the clear morning air. They seemed to speak in familiar terms to the responsive spirit of Lorella.

"My native hills!" she murmured, dreamily. "See how the foliage drinks the sunlight from the hollows and

"Mrs. Blaylock's maiden days," said the Colonel, interpreting her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, "were spent

among the mountains of northern Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days. Holly

Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she may have suffered in health and

spirits by so long a residence there. That is one portent reason for the change we are making. My dear, can

you not recall those lines you wroteentitled, I think, 'The Georgia Hills'the poem that was so extensively

Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tenderness upon the Colonel, fingered for a moment the silvery

curl that drooped upon her bosom, then looked again toward the mountains. Without preliminary or

affectation or demurral she began, in rather thrilling and more deeply pitched tones to recite these lines:

"The Georgia hills, the Georgia hills! Oh, heart, why dost thou pine? Are not these sheltered lowlands fair

With mead and bloom and vine? Ah! as the slowpaced river here Broods on its natal rills My spirit drifts, in

"And through the closedrawn, curtained night I steal on sleep's slow wings Back to my heart's easeslopes

of pine Where end my wanderings. Oh, heaven seems nearer from their tops And farther earthly ills

The grass upon their orchard sides Is a fine couch to me; The common note of each small bird Passes all

minstrelsy. It would not seem so dread a thing If, when the Reaper wills, He might come there and take my

Thats great stuff, ma'am," said J. Pinkney Bloom, enthusiastically, when the poetess had concluded. "I wish I

"The mountains ever call to their children," murmured Mrs. Blaylock. "I feel that life will take on the rosy

hue of hope again in among these beautiful hills. Peytona little taste of the currant wine, if you will be so

good. The journey, though delightful in the extreme, slightly fatigues me." Colonel Blaylock again visited the

depths of his prolific coat, and produced a tightly corked, rough, black bottle. Mr. Bloom was on his feet in

"Let me bring a glass, ma'am. You come along, Colonelthere's a little table we can bring, too. Maybe we

Mrs. Blaylock reclined at ease. Few royal ladies have held their royal prerogative with the serene grace of the

petted Southern woman. The Colonel, with an air as gallant and assiduous as in the days of his courtship, and

J. Pinkney Bloom, with a ponderous agility half professional and half directed by some resurrected, unnamed,

long forgotten sentiment, formed a diversified but attentive court. The currant winewine home made from

the Holly Springs fruitwent round, and then J. Pinkney began to hear something of Holly Springs life.

It seemed (from the conversation of the Blaylocks) that the Springs was decadent. A third of the population

had moved away. Business and the Colonel was an authority on businesshad dwindled to nothing. After

carefully studying the field of opportunities open to capital he had sold his little property there for eight

hundred dollars and invested it in one of the enterprises opened up by the book in Okochee.

"Might I inquire, sir," said Mr. Bloom, "in what particular line of business you inserted your coin? I know

that town as well as I know the regulations for illegal use of the mails. I might give you a hunch as to whether

J. Pinkney, somehow, had a kindly feeling toward these unsophisticated representatives of bygone days.

They were so simple, impractical, and unsuspecting. He was glad that he happened not to have a gold brick or

a block of that western Bad Boy Silver Mine stock along with him. He would have disliked to unload on

people he liked so well as he did these; but there are some temptations toe enticing to be resisted.

"No, sir," said Colonel Blaylock. pausing to arrange the queen's wrap. "I did not invest in Okochee. I have

made an exhaustive study of business conditions, and I regard old settled towns as unfavorable fields in

which to place capital that is limited in amount. Some months ago, through the kindness of a friend, there

came into my hands a map and description of this new town of Skyland that has been built upon the lake. The

description was so pleasing, the future of the town set forth in such convincing arguments, and its increasing

prosperity portrayed in such an attractive style that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity it offered. I

carefully selected a lot in the centre of the business district, although its price was the highest in the

"Are you the manI mean, did you pay five hundred dollars for a lot in Skyland" asked J. Pinkney Bloom.

"I did, sir," answered the Colonel, with the air of a modest millionaire explaining his success; "a lot most

excellently situated on the same square with the opera house, and only two squares from the board of trade. I

consider the purchase a most fortuitous one. It is my intention to erect a small building upon it at once, and

open a modest book and stationery store. During past years I have met with many pecuniary reverses, and I

now find it necessary to engage in some commercial occupation that will furnish me with a livelihood. The

book and stationery business, though an humble one, seems to me not inapt nor altogether uncongenial. I am

a graduate of the University of Virginia; and Mrs. Blaylock's really wonderful acquaintance with

belleslettres and poetic literature should go far toward insuring success. Of course, Mrs. Blaylock would not

personally serve behind the counter. With the nearly three hundred dollars I have remaining I can manage the

building of a house, by giving a lien on the lot. I have an old friend in Atlanta who is a partner in a large book

store, and he has agreed to furnish me with a stock of goods on credit, on extremely easy terms. I am pleased

to hope, sir, that Mrs. Blaylock's health and happiness will be increased by the change of locality. Already I

fancy I can perceive the return of those roses that were once the hope and despair of Georgia cavaliers."

Again followed that wonderful bow, as the Colonel lightly touched the pale cheek of the poetess. Mrs.

Blaylock, blushing like a girl, shook her curl and gave the Colonel an arch, reproving tap. Secret of eternal

youthwhere art thou? Every second the answer comes"Here, here, here." Listen to thine own heartbeats,

"Those years," said Mrs. Blaylock, "in Holly Springs were long, long, long. But now is the promised land in

"Doubtless," said the Colonel, "we shall be able to secure comfortable accommodations at some modest hotel

at reasonable rates. Our trunks are in Okochee, to be forwarded when we shall have made permanent

J. Pinkney Bloom excused himself, went forward, and stood by the captain at the wheel.

"Mac," said he, "do you remember my telling you once that I sold one of those fivehundreddollar lots in

"I'm not a coward, as a general rule," went on the promoter, "but I always said that if I ever met the sucker

that bought that lot I'd run like a turkey. Now, you see that old babeinthewood over there? Well, he's the

boy that drew the prize. That was the only fivehundreddollar lot that went. The rest ranged from ten dollars

to two hundred. His wife writes poetry. She's invented one about the high grounds of Georgia, that's way up

"Well," said MacFarland, with another grin, "it's a good thing you are along, J. P.; you can show 'em around

"He's got three hundred dollars left to build a house and store with," went on J. Pinkney, as if he were talking

Captain MacFarland released the wheel long enough to give his leg a roguish slap.

"Mac, you're a fool," said J. Pinkney Bloom, coldly. He went back and joined the Blaylocks, where he sat,

less talkative, with that straight furrow between his brows that always stood as a signal of schemes being

"There's a good many swindles connected with these booms," he said presently. "What if this Skyland should

turn out to be onethat is, suppose business should be sort of dull there, and no special sale for books?"

"My dear sir," said Colonel Blaylock, resting his hand upon the back of his wife's chair, "three times I have

been reduced to almost penury by the duplicity of others, but I have not yet lost faith in humanity. If I have

been deceived again, still we may glean health and content, if not worldly profit. I am aware that there are

dishonest schemers in the world who set traps for the unwary, but even they are not altogether bad. My dear,

can you recall those verses entitled 'He Giveth the Increase,' that you composed for the choir of our church in

"That was four years ago," said Mrs. Blaylock; "perhans I can repeat a verse or two.

"The lily springs from the rotting mould; Pearls from the deep sea slime; Good will come out of Nazareth All

"To the hardest heart the softening grace Cometh, at last, to bless; Guiding it right to help and cheer And

"I cannot remember the rest. The lines were not ambitious. They were written to the music composed by a

"It's a fine rhyme, just the same," declared Mr. Bloom. "It seems to ring the bell, all right. I guess I gather the

sense of it. It means that the rankest kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once in a while."

"Ought to be in sight of the spires and gilded domes of Skyland now in a few minutes," chirruped

And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village, high up on the hills, smothered among

green trees. That was Cold Branchno boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on

the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold Branch had

nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake.

"Mac," said J. Pinkney suddenly, "I want you to stop at Cold Branch. There's a landing there that they made

"Can't," said the captain, grinning more broadly. "I've got the United States mails on board. Right today this

boat's in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And

the great city of Skyland, all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I'm ashamed of your extravagance, J. P."

"Mac," almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his dangerline voice, "I looked into the engine room of the ~Dixie

Belle~ a while ago. Don't you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black Japan can't hide

flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you traded for repairsthey were all yours,

"Oh, come now, J. P.," said the captain. "You know I was just fooling. I'll put you off at Cold Branch, if you

Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the ~Dixie Belle~ turned her nose toward a little, cranky

wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger

The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the ~Dixie Belle~ proceeded on her way up the lake.

Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire

the view. Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel and his wife praised it for

its homelike and peaceful beauty. Mr. Bloom conducted them to a twostory building on a shady street that

bore the legend, "Pinetop Inn." Here he took his leave, receiving the cordial thanks of the two for his

attentions, the Colonel remarking that he thought they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take

J.Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch's main street. He did not know this town, but he knew towns,

and his feet did not falter. Presently he saw a sign over a door: "Frank E. Cooly, AttorneyatLaw and

"Get your hat, son," said Mr. Bloom, in his breezy way, "and a blank deed, and come along. It's a job for

"Now," he continued, when Mr. Cooly had responded with alacrity, "is there a bookstore in town?"

Henry Williams was behind his counter. His store was a small one, containing a mixture of books, stationery,

and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it was Henry's homea decent cottage, vineembowered and cosy. Henry was

"I want to buy your house and store," said Mr. Bloom. "I haven't got time to dickername your price."

"It's worth eight hundred," said Henry, too much dazed to ask more than its value.

"Shut that door," said Mr. Bloom to the lawyer. Then he tore off his coat and vest, and began to unbutton his

"Wanter fight about it, do yer?" said Henry Williams, jumping up and cracking his heels together twice. "All

He drew eight onehundreddollar bills from his money belt and planked them down on the counter. Mr.

Cooly showed signs of future promise, for he already had the deed spread out, and was reaching across the

counter for the ink bottle. Never before or since was such quick action had in Cold Branch.

Within thirty minutes Henry Williams was out of business, and Mr. Bloom stood on the brick sidewalk with

"You'll find the party at the Pinetop Inn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Get it recorded, and take it down and give

it to him. He'll ask you a hell's mint of questions; so here's ten dollars for the trouble you'll have in not being

"Well," said the really talented Cooly, who even yet retained his right mind, "now and then."

"Dig into it," said Mr. Bloom, "it'll pay you. Never heard a poem, now, that run something like this, did

A good thing out of Nazareth Comes up sometimes, I guess, On hand, all right, to help and cheer A sucker in

"It's a hymn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Now, show me the way to a livery stable, son, for I'm going to hit the

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twentyfive years, and then it broke out on me, and

The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. We

crowded into his private office to present it. I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a little speech that

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that brought down the housewhich was a

very solid one in the wholesale hardware line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the employees took

My reputation as a humorist dates from halfpast nine o'clock on that morning. For weeks afterward my

fellow clerks fanned the flame of my selfesteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully

clever speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of each one of my jokes.

Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might speak sanely on business matters and the

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the granite ware with persiflage. I was second

bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a balance sheet without something comic about the footings or could

find no cause for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other clerks were disappointed. By degrees my fame

spread, and I became a local "character." Our town was small enough to make this possible. The daily

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and spontaneous repartee. This gift I

cultivated and improved by practice. And the nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or

offending others. People began to smile when they saw me coming, and by the time we had met I generally

I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of five. Naturally, we lived in a vinecovered

cottage, and were happy. My salary as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills

At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I considered peculiarly happy, and had sent

them to certain periodicals that print such things. All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of the

One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly publication. He suggested that I submit to him

a humorous composition to fill a column of space; hinting that he would make it a regular feature of each

issue if the work proved satisfactory. I did so, and at the end of two weeks he offered to make a contract with

me for a year at a figure that was considerably higher than the amount paid me by the hardware firm.

I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind with the imperishable evergreens of

literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. Here was the

chance to liberate myself from drudgery. I talked over the matter very seriously with Louisa. We agreed that I

I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell banquet. The speech I made there coruscated. It was printed

"Late, by George!" I exclaimed, and grabbed for my clothes. Louisa reminded me that I was no longer a slave

After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen. Dear girl! There was my table and chair,

writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And all the author's trappingsthe celery stand full of fresh roses and

honeysuckle, last year's calendar on the wall, the dictionary, and a little bag of chocolates to nibble between

I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or odalisks orperhapsit is trapezoids.

I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim scytheman. I went to dinner.

"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Louisa. "Goetheor was it Napoleon?said five hours a day is

enough for mental labor. Couldn't you take me and the children to the woods this afternoon?"

But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I was turning out copy as regular as shipments of hardware.

And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I was referred to in a gossipy way by the

critics as something fresh in the line of humorists. I augmented my income considerably by contributing to

I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea and make a twoline joke of it, earning a dollar.

With false whiskers on, it would serve up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the

skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as ~vers de societe~ with neatly shod feet

I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople began to look upon

me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifier I had been when I clerked in the hardware

After five or six months the spontaniety seemed to depart from my humor. Quips and droll sayings no longer

fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes hard run for material. I found myself listening to catch available

ideas from the conversation of my friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed at the wall paper for

And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, greedy, I

stood among them like a veritable killjoy. Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from

their lips and I was after it like a hound springing upon a bone. I dared not trust my memory; but, turning

aside guiltily and meanly, I would make a note of it in my everpresent memorandum book or upon my cuff

My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. I was not the same man. Where once I had furnished them

entertainment and jollity, I now preyed upon them. No jests from me ever bid for their smiles now. They

were too precious. I could not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood.

I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow's, that they might drop from their beaks

Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not even paying that much for the sayings I

No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search of material. Even in church

my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil.

The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a

pun or a ~bon mot~. The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I

conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of soprano, tenor, and

My own home became a hunting ground. My wife is a singularly feminine creature, candid, sympathetic, and

impulsive. Once her conversation was my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked

her. She was a gold mine of those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind.

I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched only the sacred precincts of

home. With devilish cunning I encouraged her to talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the cold,

A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet confidences in the

Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender lamb, hearkening even to her soft

words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch an idea for my next day's grind. There is worse to come.

God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my little children.

Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. I found a ready sale for

this kind of humor, and was furnishing a regular department in a magazine with "Funny Fancies of

Childhood." I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide behind sofas and doors, or

crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes in the yard to eavesdrop while they were at play. I had all the

Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next mail, I covered myself in a pile of

autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to believe that

Guy was aware of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his setting fire to

the leaves, causing the destruction of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent.

Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melancholy

ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: "Here comes papa," and they would gather their toys and scurry

And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I had saved a thousand dollars, and we

But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was everything that it sounds like. I had no

friends, no amusements, no enjoyment of life. The happiness of my family had been sacrificed. I was a bee,

sucking sordid honey from life's fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account of my stingo.

One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile. Not in months had the thing happened. I was

passing the undertaking establishment of Peter Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door and saluted me. I

The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire burned, in a little stove. A customer

came, and Peter left me alone for a while. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me a sense of

beautiful calm and content, I looked around the place. There were rows of shining rosewood caskets, black

palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was

peace, order, silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of life, was a little niche

When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous

idea from those sombre and stately trappings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a

A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and ease. I

had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting

I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk, fearful that he might prove to be a

But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have I known a man's talk to be as

magnificently dull as Peter's was. Compared with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of

wit marred his words. Commonplaces as trite and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from his lips no more

stirring in quality than a last week's tape running from a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried upon him one of my

best pointed jokes. It fell back ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved that man from then on.

Two or three evenings each week I would steal down to Heffelbower's and revel in his back room. That was

my only joy. I began to rise early and hurry through my work, that I might spend more time in my haven. In

no other place could I throw off my habit of extracting humorous ideas from my surroundings. Peter's talk

Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from one's labor which every man

needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed

them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to make a jocose remark

I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my hours of holiday with a schoolboy's zest.

Mv work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk,

and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my

My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not to tell her;

One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and a fine, fluffy hearse plume to dust my

I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the beloved back room down at Heffelbower's. But Louisa found

them, and she shrieked with horror. I had to console her with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in

her eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at doublequick time.

One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired

way he showed me his books, and explained that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He had

thought of taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have me than any one he knew. When I left

his place that afternoon Peter had my check for the thousand dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner in

I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I was dreading to tell my

wife about it. But I walked on air. To give up the writing of humorous stuff, once more to enjoy the apples of

life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of hard cider to make the pubic feel funnywhat a

At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come during my absence. Several of them

contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first began going to Heffelbower's my stuff had been coming

back with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency.

Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the weekly with which I had a regular contract. The checks for

DEAR SIR: As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. While regretting the

necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite

pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted quite a large proportion of our readers. But

for the past two months we have noticed a decided falling off in its quality. Your earlier work showed a

spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun and wit. Of late it is labored, studied, and unconvincing, giving painful

evidence of hard toil and drudging mechanism. Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions

I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew extremely long, and there were tears in her

"The mean old thing!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I'm sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were.

And it doesn't take you half as long to write them as it did." And then, I suppose, Louisa thought of the

For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa thought the

trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and

"The theatre for us tonight!" I shouted; "nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at

And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking

establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me.

With the editor's letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a

few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter

In conclusion, I will say that today you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of

merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife's

confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of

childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand.

Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter attends to outside

matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake.

The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York City to enter literature has but one thing

to do, provided he has studied carefully his field in advance. He must go straight to Madison Square, write an

I cannot recall either a novel or a story dealing with the popular theme of the young writer from the provinces

who comes to the metropolis to win fame and fortune with his pen in which the hero does not get his start that

way. It does seem strange that some author, in casting about for startlingly original plots, has not hit upon the

idea of having his hero write about the bluebirds in Union Square and sell it to the ~Herald~. But a search

through the files of metropolitan fiction counts up overwhelmingly for the sparrows and the old Garden

Of course it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the budding author is always successful. He is

primed by necessity to a superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found

this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the

sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; the birds chirp, the tree branches

sway, the noise of wheels is forgotten; he writes with his soul in his penand he sells it to the ~Sun~ for

I had read of this custom during many years before I came to New York. When my friends were using their

strongest arguments to dissuade me from coming, I only smiled serenely. They did not know of that sparrow

When I arrived in New York, and the car took me straight from the ferry up Twentythird Street to Madison

I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, and the next morning I was on a bench in Madison Square

almost by the time the sparrows were awake. Their melodious chirping, the benignant spring foliage of the

noble trees and the clean, fragrant grass reminded me so potently of the old farm I had left that tears almost

Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The brave, piercing notes of those cheerful small birds formed a

keynote to a wonderful, light, fanciful song of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they were creatures

with hearts pitched to the tune of woods and fields; as I was, so were they captives by circumstance in the

And then the early morning people began to pass through the square to their worksullen people, with

sidelong glances and glum faces, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from the

bird notes, and wrought it into a lesson, and a poem, and a carnival dance, and a lullaby; and then translated it

For two hours my pencil traveled over my pad with scarcely a rest. Then I went to the little room I had rented

for two days, and there I cut it to half, and then mailed it, whitehot, to the ~Sun~.

The next morning I was up by daylight and spent two cents of my capital for a paper. If the word "sparrow"

was in it I was unable to find it. I took it up to my room and spread it out on the bed and went over it, column

Three hours afterward the postman brought me a large envelope containing my MS. and a piece of

inexpensive paper, about 3 inches by 4I suppose some of you have seen themupon which was written in

I went over to the square and sat upon a bench. No; I did not think it necessary to eat any breakfast that

morning. The confounded pests of sparrows were making the square hideous with their idiotic "cheep,

cheep." I never saw birds so persistently noisy, impudent, and disagreeable in all my life.

By this time, according to all traditions, I should have been standing in the office of the editor of the ~Sun~.

That personagea tall, grave, whitehaired manwould strike a silver bell as he grasped my hand and

"Mr. McChesney," he would be saying when a subordinate appeared, "this is Mr. Henry, the young man who

sent in that exquisite gem about the sparrows in Madison Square. You may give him a desk at once. Your

This was what I had been led to expect by all writers who have evolved romances of literary New York.

Something was decidedly wrong with tradition. I could not assume the blame, so I fixed it upon the sparrows.

At that moment an individual wearing an excess of whiskers, two hats, and a pestilential air slid into the seat

"Say, Willie," he muttered cajolingly, "could you cough up a dime out of your coffers for a cup of coffee this

"Birds," I said fiercely. "The brownthroated songsters carolling songs of hope and cheer to weary man

toiling amid the city's dust and din. The little feathered couriers from the meadows and woods chirping

sweetly to us of blue skies and flowering fields. The confounded little squinteyed nuisances yawping like a

flock of steam pianos, and stuffing themselves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, while a man sits on a

As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that lay by the bench, and hurled it with all my force into a close

congregation of the sparrows on the grass. The flock flew to the trees with a babel of shrill cries; but two of

In a moment my unsavory friend had leaped over the row of benches and secured the fluttering victims,

which he thrust hurriedly into his pockets. Then he beckoned me with a dirty forefinger.

Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led me away from the park down a side street and through a

crack in a fence into a vacant lot where some excavating had been going on. Behind a pile of old stones and

I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for burnt sacrifice. There were old planks,

splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half a

In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow spitted upon a stick over the leaping flames.

"Say," said my fellow bivouacker, "this ain't so bad when a fellow's hungry. It reminds me of when I struck

New York firstabout fifteen years ago. I come in from the West to see if I could get a job on a newspaper.

I hit the Madison Square Park the first mornin' after, and was sitting around on the benches. I noticed the

sparrows chirpin', and the grass and trees so nice and green that I thought I was back in the country again.

"Say," said my friend, suspiciously, "you seem to know a good deal. Where was you? I went to sleep on the

At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. M. express. In one coach

there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of

an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold,

frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glumfaced person, heavily built and roughly dressed.

As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the

attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated themselves. The young woman's glance fell upon

them with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender pink

tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little graygloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet,

"Well, Mr. Easton, if you ~will~ make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don't vou ever recognize old friends

The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight

embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand.

"It's Miss Fairchild," he said, with a smile. "I'll ask you to excuse the other hand; "it's otherwise engaged just

He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining "bracelet" to the left one of his companion.

The glad look in the girl's eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from her cheeks. Her

lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress. Easton, with a little laugh, as if amused, was about to speak again

when the other forestalled him. The glumfaced man had been watching the girl's countenance with veiled

"You'll excuse me for speaking, miss, but, I see you're acquainted with the marshall here. If you'll ask him to

speak a word for me when we get to the pen he'll do it, and it'll make things easier for me there. He's taking

"Oh!" said the girl, with a deep breath and returning color. "So that is what you are doing out here? A

"My dear Miss Fairchild," said Easton, calmly, "I had to do something. Money has a way of taking wings

unto itself, and you know it takes money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in

the West, andwell, a marshalship isn't quite as high a position as that of ambassador, but"

"The ambassador," said the girl, warmly, "doesn't call any more. He needn't ever have done so. You ought to

know that. And so now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go into all

kinds of dangers. That's different from the Washington life. You have been missed from the old crowd."

The girl's eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs.

"Don't you worry about them, miss," said the other man. "All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners

"I love the West," said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the car

window. She began to speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner: "Mamma and I spent the

summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was slightly ill. I could live and be happy in

the West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money isn't everything. But people always misunderstand

"Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glumfaced man. "This isn't quite fair. I'm needing a drink, and haven't had

a smoke all day. Haven't you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won't you? I'm half dead for a

The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow smile on his face.

"I can't deny a petition for tobacco," he said, lightly. "It's the one friend of the unfortunate. Goodbye, Miss

"It's too bad you are not going East," she said, reclothing herself with manner and style. "But you must go on

The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversation. Said one of them: "That marshal's a

"Young!" exclaimed the first speaker, "whyOh! didn't you catch on? Saydid you ever know an officer to

The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative . A large amount of reminiscence is, by

common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire

That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor apartments. On the table stood a

singularlooking green plant in a red earthen jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was provided

with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the slightest breeze with a peculiar beckoning

Trysdale's friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard complaining at being allowed to drink alone.

Both men were in evening dress. White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the

As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale's mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the

last few hours. It seemed that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in odorous

masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a thousand wellbred voices, the rustle of

crisp garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to

>From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become a habit of his mind, to reach some

conjecture as to why and how he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly

found himself confronted by a thing he had never before faced his own innermost, unmitigated, arid

unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He

shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and

threadbare. Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how free from either she had always

As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an unworthy, sullen exultation that had

served to support him. He had told himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the man to

whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor consolation had been wrenched from him. For, when

he saw that swift, limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew himself to be

forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit

had crumbled; its last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel between them,

For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those last few days before the tide had so

She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had accepted her homage with royal

grandeur. It had been a very sweet incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself); so

childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere. She had invested him with an almost

supernatural number of high attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the oblation as a

As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the crowning instance of his fatuous and

tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to him. The scene was the night when he had asked her to come

up on his pedestal with him and share his greatness. He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to

dwell upon the memory of her convincing beauty that nightthe careless wave of her hair, the tenderness

and virginal charm of her looks and words. But they had been enough, and they had brought him to speak.

"And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language like a native. Why have you hidden

Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty (he sometimes did such things) of

airing at the club some old, canting Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries.

Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man to have magnified this exhibition of

But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and flattering. He allowed the imputation to pass

without denial. Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish

scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and, among its soft convolutions, he did not feel the prick of

How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a snared bird when he laid his mightiness

at her feet! He could have sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her eyes, but,

coyly, she would give him no direct answer. "I will send you my answer tomorrow," she said; and he, the

indulgent, confident victor, smilingly granted the delay. The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for

the word. At noon her groom came to the door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was no

note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous foreign or botanical name. He waited until

night, but her answer did not come. His large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her. Two evenings

later they met at a dinner. Their greetings were conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, wondering,

eager. He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly swiftness she took her cue from

his manner, and turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his

fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his selfconceit. If

The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon his thoughts, aroused him.

"I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look unhappy as if you yourself had been

married instead of having acted merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand

miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive at the

sacrificeplease to observe how lightly my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had, too, and

"Your brandy," resumed the other, coming over and joining him, "is abominable. Run down to see me some

time at Punta Redonda, and try some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It's worth the, trip. Hallo! here's

"Very well. It's a tropical concern. See hundreds of 'em around Punta every day. Here's the name on this tag

"Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning to you. They call it by this

I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, highwayman, and murderer.

"But, my dear Knight," said I, "it sounds incredible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the most

wonderful feats in your profession known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds

under the very noses of the policeyou have boldly entered the homes of millionaires and held them up with

an empty gun while you made free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the glare of

Broadway's electric lights; you have killed and robbed with superb openness and absolute impunitybut

when you boast that within fortyeight hours after committing a murder you can run down and actually bring

me face to face with the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my

"You pique my professional pride, doctor," he said in a nettled tone. "I will convince you."

About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperouslooking citizen was rounding a clump of bushes where the

walk curved. Knight suddenly drew a revolver and shot the man in the back. His victim fell and lay without

The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes his money, watch, and a valuable ring

Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the shot had been fired. Avery Knight

"I have just killed a man," he announced, seriously, "and robbed him of his possessions."

"G'wan," said the policeman, angrily, "or I'll run yez in! Want yer name in the papers, don't yez? I never

knew the cranks to come around so quick after a shootin' before. Out of th' park, now, for yours, or I'll fan

"What you have done," I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I walked on, "was easy. But when you come to

the task of hunting down the detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have undertaken a

"Perhaps so," said Knight, lightly. "I will admit that my success depends in a degree upon the sort of man

they start after me. If it should be an ordinary plainclothes man I might fail to gain a sight of him. If they

honor me by giving the case to some one of their celebrated sleuths I do not fear to match my cunning and

On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look on his keen countenance.

"As usual," said Knight, smilingly. "I have put in the morning at the police station and at the inquest. It seems

that a card case of mine containing cards with my name and address was found near the body. They have

three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description of me. The case has been placed in the hands of

Shamrock Jolnes, the famous detective. He left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment. I waited at my

"You will never see Jolnes," I continued, "until this murder has been forgotten, two or three weeks from now.

I had a better opinion of your shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you waited he has

got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction theories now, and no wrongdoer has yet been known to

"Doctor," said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and a squaring of his chin, "in spite of the

record your city holds of something like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the perpetrator,

and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake to break that record. Tomorrow I will take you to

Shamrock Jolnes I will unmask him before you and prove to you that it is not an impossibility for an

"I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he admitted. "I know something of detectives' methods, and I

followed out a few of them, expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a .45 caliber, I

thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in Fortyfifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the

detective at the Columbia University, as the man's being shot in the back naturally suggested hazing. But I

"Not by ordinary methods," said Knight. "I might walk up and down Broadway for a month without success.

But you have aroused my pride, doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise you I

"Nonsense, man," I replied. "When our burglars walk into our houses and politely demand, thousands of

dollars' worth of jewels, and then dine and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a mere

murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is looking for you?"

"Doc," said he, "I have it. Put on your hat, and come with me. In half an hour I guarantee that you shall stand

I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to the driver, but the vehicle set out at a

smart pace up Broadway, turning presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It was with a

rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and

superb self confidence had prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of bringing me into the

presence of a murderer and the New York detective in pursuit of him simultaneously. Even yet I could not

"Are you sure that you are not being led into some trap?" I asked. "Suppose that your clue, whatever it is,

should bring us only into the presence of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen cops!"

"My dear doctor," said Knight, a little stiffly. "I would remind you that I am no gambler."

The cab stopped before one of the handsomest residences on the avenue. Walking up and down in front of the

house was a man with long red whiskers, with a detective's badge showing on the lapel of his coat. Now and

then the man would remove his whiskers to wipe his face, and then I would recognize at once the

wellknown features of the great New York detective. Jolnes was keeping a sharp watch upon the doors and

"Well, doctor," said Knight, unable to repress a note of triumph in his voice, "have you seen?"

"It is wonderfulwonderful!" I could not help exclaiming as our cab started on its return trip. "But how did

"My dear doctor," interrupted the great murderer, "the inductive theory is what the detectives use. My process

is more modern. I call it the saltatorial theory. Without bothering with the tedious mental phenomena

necessary to the solution of a mystery from slight clues, I jump at once to a conclusion. I will explain to you

"In the first place, I argued that as the crime was committed in New York City in broad daylight, in a public

place and under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth available was let loose

upon the case, the perpetrator would never be discovered. Do you not think my postulation justified by

"Stop that," interrupted Knight, with a smile, "I've heard that several times. It's too late now. I will proceed.

"If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I reasoned, although the best detective talent was employed to

ferret them out, it must be true that the detectives went about their work in the wrong way. And not only in

"I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate publicity. I have no money to speak of; I do not like oatmeal, and it

is the one ambition of my life to die rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do not care for my

"Now, my dear doctor, that is the true description of myself, the man whom that shrewd detective was to hunt

down. You who are familiar with the history of crime in New York of late should be able to foretell the

result. When I promised you to exhibit to your incredulous gaze the sleuth who was set upon me, you laughed

at me because you said that detectives and murderers never met in New York. I have demonstrated to you

"It was very simple," replied the distinguished murderer. "I assumed that the detective would go exactly

opposite to the clues he had. I have given you a description of myself. Therefore, he must necessarily set to

work and trail a short man with a white beard who likes to be in the papers, who is very wealthy, is fond 'of

oatmeal, wants to die poor, and is of an extremely generous and philanthropic disposition. When thus far is

reached the mind hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to the spot where Shamrock Jolnes was piping

"Knight," said I, "you're a wonder. If there was no danger of your reforming, what a rounds man you'd make

[This story has been rewritten and published in "Strictly Business" under the title, The Proof of the Pudding.]

Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that month and get a story out of the

drama. I found one a few breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems to decide a serious question in art.

There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis and meand two or three million sunworshippers who

remained at desks and counters. The elect had fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had already begun to

draw for additional funds. Every evening Hollis and I prowled about the deserted town searching for coolness

in empty cafes, diningrooms, and roofgardens. We knew to the tenth part of a revolution the speed of every

electric fan in Gotham, and we followed the swiftest as they varied. Hollis's fiancee. Miss Loris Sherman, had

been in the Adirondacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a month. In another week he would join her party there.

In the meantime, he cursed the city cheerfully and optimistically, and sought my society because I suffered

him to show me her photograph during the black coffee every time we dined together.

It was one insufferable evening when the overplus of the day's heat was being hurled quiveringly back to the

heavens by every surcharged brick and stone and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the cunning of the

twolegged beasts we had found an oasis where the hoofs of Apollo's steed had not been allowed to strike.

Our seats were on an ocean of cool, polished oak; the white linen of fifty deserted tables flapped like seagulls

in the artificial breeze; a mile away a waiter lingered for a heliographic signalwe might have roared songs

Out came Miss Loris's photo with the coffee, and I once more praised the elegant poise of the neck, the

extremely lowcoiled mass of heavy hair, and the eyes that followed one, like those in an oil painting.

"She's the greatest ever," said Hollis, with enthusiasm. "Good as Great Northern Preferred, and a disposition

built like a watch. One week more and I'll be happy Jonnyonthespot. Old Tom Tolliver, my best college

chum, went up there two weeks ago. He writes me that Loris doesn't talk about anything but me. Oh, I guess

"Yes, yes," said I, hurriedly, pulling out my typewritten play. "She's no doubt a charming girl. Now, here's

"Not exactly," I answered. "I read half of it the other day to a fellow whose brother knows Robert Edeson; but

"Go on," said Hollis, sliding back in his chair like a good fellow. "I'm no stage carpenter, but I'll tell you what

I think of it from a firstrow balcony standpoint. I'm a theatre bug during the season, and I can size up a fake

play almost as quick as the gallery can. Flag the waiter once more, and then go ahead as hard as you like with

I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not without some elocution. There was one scene in it that I

believed in greatly. The comedy swiftly rises into thrilling and unexpectedly developed drama. Capt.

Marchmont suddenly becomes cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him

from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them from that momentshe with her

magnificent lies and siren charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with

his man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his heart. That scene I always thought was a

crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers her duplicity by reading on a blotter in a mirror the

impression of a note that she has written to the Count, he raises his hand to heaven and exclaims: "O God,

who created woman while Adam slept, and gave her to him for a companion, take back Thy gift and return

"Come now," went on Hollis, "don't be an idiot. You know very well that nobody spouts any stuff like that

these days. That sketch went along all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that rightarm exercise

and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or Bill Jones would."

"I'll admit," said I, earnestly (for my theory was being touched upon), "that on all ordinary occasions all of us

use commonplace language to convey our thoughts. You will rememberthat up to the moment when the

captain makes his terrible discovery all the characters on the stage talk pretty much as they would, in real life.

But I believe that I am right in allowing him lines suitable to the strong and tragic situation into which he

"Tragic, my eye!" said my friend, irreverently. "In Shakespeare's day he might have sputtered out some

highcockalorum nonsense of that sort, because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank verse and

"It is my opinion," said I, "that great human emotions shake up our vocabulary and leave the words best

suited to express them on top. A sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out of

an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on the stage to portray those

"That's where you fellows are wrong," said Hollis. "Plain, everyday talk is what goes. Your captain would

very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of

"Possibly, a little later," I continued. "But just at the timejust as the blow is delivered, if something

Scriptural or theatrical and deeptongued isn't wrung from a man in spite of his modern and practical way of

"Of course," said Hollis, kindly, "you've got to whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The audience

expects it. When the villain kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the

atmosphere, and scream: "Me cheeild, me cheeild!" What she would actually do would be to call up the

police by 'phone, ring for some strong tea, and get the little darling's photo out, ready for the reporters. When

you get your villain in a cornera stage corner it's all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and

hiss: "All is lost!" Off the stage he would remark: "This is a conspiracy against me I refer you to my

"I get no consolation," said I, gloomily, "from your concession of an accentuated stage treatment. In my play

I fondly hoped that I was following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace way, they

And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great hotel and began to nibble languidly at the

gay flies in the swift current of Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled.

We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but soon the weariness of Manhattan in

summer overcame us. Nine stories up, facing the south, was Hollis's apartment, and we soon stepped into an

I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten, and I stood at a sideboard mixing things,

with cracked ice and glasses all about me. A breeze from the bay came in the windows not altogether blighted

by the asphalt furnace over which it had passed. Hollis, whistling softly, turned over a latearrived letter or

I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when I heard a sound. Some man's voice groaned hoarsely:

"False, oh, God!false, and Love is a lie and friendship but the byword of devils!"

I looked around quickly. Hollis lay across the table with his head down upon his outstretched arms. And then

I knew himhe was poking fun at me about my theory. And it did seem so unnatural, those swelling words

during our quiet gossip, that I half began to believe I had been mistakenthat my theory was wrong.

"You were right about that theatrical business, old man," he said, quietly, as he tossed a note to me.

"I see," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, "that another street car motorman

in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walking

"Do you think they would have lynched him?" asked the New Yorker, in the next seat of the ferry station,

"Not until after the election," said the tall man, cutting a corner off his plug of tobacco. "I've been in your city

long enough to know something about your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least dangerous of them

"You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for pigs' knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped

in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then suddenly

turns back to ask his inother whether it was pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The

motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then

a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers torn away by the fender,

"In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens, crying, 'Lynch the motorman! Lynch the

motorman!' at the top of their voices. Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a rope; but they find

the last one has just been cut up and labelled. Hundreds of the excited mob press close to the cowering

motorman, whose hand is observed to tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick of pepsin gum from his

"When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on the motorman, some bringing camp stools

and sitting quite close to him, and all shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces his way through them

"'Hello, Mike,' says the motorman in a low voice, 'nice day. Shall I sneak off a block or so, or would you like

"'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the policeman, 'I'd like to disperse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I

haven't defeated a lynching mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only 300, that wanted to

string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears. It would boost me some down at the station.'

"'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything to oblige. I'll turn pale and tremble.'

"And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says, 'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight seconds the

desperate mob has scattered and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to search for

"I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman because of an accident," said the New

"You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They know the motorman's all right, and that he wouldn't even run

over a stray dog if he could help it. And they know that not a man among 'em would tie the knot to hang even

"Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?" asked the New Yorker.

"To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, "that he is safe. If they really wanted to do him up they

"Not one at a time," agreed the tall man, promptly. "You've got a fine lot of singlehanded scrappers in your

town. I'd rather fight three of you than one; and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's victims in a bunch before

I'd pass two citizens on a dark corner, with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded up in a bunch

you lose your nerve. Get you in crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L' road guards and George B. Cortelyou and

the tintype booths at Coney Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. ~E pluribus nihil.~ Whenever one of

your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler, "Lynch him!' he says to himself, "Oh, dear, I suppose I must

look pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse tomorrow. This is a

sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the board in the next handicap.'

"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New York policemen when an infuriated

mob demands that he be turned over to them for lynching. "For God's sake, officers,' cries the distracted

"'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's three of usme and Darrel and the

plainclothes man; and there's only sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they took

ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrel, and we'll be movin' along to the station.'"

"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless," said the New Yorker, with a faint

"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on a visit here once had an arm broken and lost

"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man"but it was a union riotat the Vanastor wedding."

"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain cases when people rise in their just majesty

and take a righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law and

order, but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one "of that race

"It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists in the South, but"

"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew; "and I don't think you will condemn my

course when I tell you that the colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own brother."

EDITORIAL NOTE.~Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter (known through his literary work

as "O. Henry") this American master of shortstory writing had begun for Hampton's Magazine the story

printed below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up writing about at the point

When he realized that he could do no more {it was his lifelong habit to write with a pencil, never dictating to

a stenographer), O. Henry told in detail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon, whom he

had often spoken of as one of the most effective shortstory writers of the present time. Mr. Porter had

delineated all of the characters, leaving only the rounding out of the plot in the final pages to Mr. Lyon.~

Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something

like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the

test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Reaumur, or Moses's carven tablets of stone.

Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the canyon of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the Bay

Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. The flakes were as large as an hour's circular tatting by Miss

Wilkins's ablest spinster, betokening a heavy snowfall and less entertainment and more adventure than the

completion of the tatting could promise. I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I would be welcome

as a snowbound pilgrim, both for hospitality's sake and because Ross had few chances to confide in living

The ranch house was just within the jaws of the canyon where its builder may have fatuously fancied that the

timbered and rocky walls on both sides would have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds; but I feared

the drift. Even now through the endless, bottomless rift in the hillsthe speaking tube of the four

windscame roaring the voice of the proprietor to the little room on the top floor.

At my "hello," a ranch hand came from an outer building and received my thankful horse. In another minute,

Ross and I sat by a stove in the diningroom of the fourroom ranch house, while the big, simple welcome of

the household lay at my disposal. Fanned by the whizzing norther, the fine, dry snow was sifted and bolted

through the cracks and knotholes of the logs. The cook room, without a separating door, appended.

In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely and weatherbeaten man moving with professional sureness

about his redhot stove. His face was stolid and unreadablesomething like that of a great thinker, or of one

who had no thoughts to conceal. I thought his eye seemed unwarrantably superior to the elements and to the

man, but quickly attributed that to the characteristic selfimportance of a petty chef. "Camp cook" was the

niche that I gave him in the Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple fits a dumpling.

Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and talked, shuddering frequently, half from

nerves and half from the freezing draughts. So he brought the bottle and the cook brought boiling water, and

we made prodigious hot toddies against the attacks of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. They sounded like

icicles dropping from the eaves, or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms on a Louis XIV chandelier that I once

heard at a boarder's dance in the parlor of a tenaweek boardinghouse in Gramercy Square. ~Sic transit.~

Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of the stars; but they who believe that all

things, from a withoutwine table d'hote to the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, might have

found a nocturne or a symphony to express the isolation of that blottedout world. The clink of glass and

bottle, the aeolian chorus of the wind in the house crannies, its deeper trombone through the canyon below,

and the Wagnerian crash of the cook's pots and pans, united in a fit, discordant melody, I thought. No less

welcome an accompaniment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison cutlet indorsed by the solvent

The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me democratically as he cast the heavy

plates around as though he were pitching quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some

appraisement and curiosity and much conciliation. There was no prophet to tell us when that drifting evil

outside might cease to fall; and it is well, when snowbound, to stand somewhere within the radius of the

cook's favorable consideration. But I could read neither favor nor disapproval in the face and manner of our

He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of commonplace, bullnecked, pinkfaced,

callous calm. He wore brown duck trousers too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with sleeves rolled

above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to me as though he had

fixed it there purposely as a protection against the weakness of an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were

better concealed. And then I let supper usurp his brief occupancy of my thoughts.

"You fellows go on and chew," answered the cook. "I ate mine in the kitchen before sundown."

George had turned to reenter the cook room. He moved slowly around and, looking at his face, it seemed to

At the door of the kitchen he stopped and looked back at us. Both Ross and I held our knives and forks poised

and gave him our regard. Some men have the power of drawing the attention of others without speaking a

After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes. He stood for a moment, while his spurious

At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into his dishpan, light his pipe, and put the

tableware through its required lavation. He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old saddle blanket a

And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set forth again the bottles and glasses; and I

saw that I stood in a deep channel through which the long dammed flood of his discourse would soon be

booming. But I was half content, comparing my fate with that of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing for

"Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a foreword. "It ain't, somehow, it seems to me, salubrious. I

can stand water and mud and two inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and mediumsized

cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets me all locoed. I reckon the reason it rattles you is

because it changes the look of things so much. It's like you had a wife and left her in the morning with the

same old blue cotton wrapper on, and rides in of a night and runs across her all outfitted in a white silk

evening frock, waving an ostrichfeather fan, and monkeying with a posy of lily flowers. Wouldn't it make

you look for your pocket compass? You'd be liable to kiss her before you collected your presence of mind."

By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up into the clouds (so it pleased me to fancy) and there

condensed into the finer snowflakes of thought; and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and bitter

enemies will do. I thought of Boss's preamble about the mysterious influence upon man exerted by that

Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts, rattraps, and welldisguised blessings that

the gods chuck down to us from the Olympian peaks, the most disquieting and evilbringing is the snow. By

scientific analysis it is absolute beauty and purity so, at the beginning we look doubtfully at chemistry.

It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another. It hides in a night the old scars and familiar places with

which we have grown heartsick or enamored. So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered robes

and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or in the reindeer sleigh into the white country where the seven

But in certain spots of the earth comes the snowmadness, made known by people turned wild and distracted

by the bewildering veil that has obscured the only world they know. In the cities, the white fairy who sets the

brains of her dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast for the comedy role. Her diamond shoe buckles

But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world of the outliers, it gives no foothold on

another sphere in return. It makes of the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in

space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty, There Nature, low

comedienne, plays her tricks on man. Though she has put him forth as her highest product, it appears that she

has fashioned him with what seems almost incredible carelessness and indexterity. Onesided and without

balance, with his two halves unequally fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his eccentric way. The snow

falls, the darkness caps it, and the ridiculous manbiped strays in accurate circles until he succumbs in the

In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it

is as hot in the mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the waterfamished. It is a derivative from water, air,

and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been extracted. Good has been said of it; even the

poets, crazed by its spell and shivering in their attics under its touch, have indited permanent melodies

Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plaguea corroding plague that Pharaoh successfully

sidestepped. It beneficently covers the wheat fields, swelling the cropand the Flour Trust gets us by the

throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of the rugged northand

the Alaskan short story is born. Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy

At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe. When it corrals man in lonely ranches,

mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the bosoms of

weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all from

the isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test. It is a good man who can show a

reaction that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam,

There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and reminiscence oh, best buyers of best

We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward named himself). But just then he was no

We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and dragged forth a living thing with a

Van Dyck beard and marvellous diamond rings. We put it through the approved curriculum of snow

rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of whiskey, working him up to a graduating class entitled to a

diploma of three fingers of rye in half a glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had already come from

the quarters at Ross's buglelike yell and kicked the stranger's staggering pony to some sheltered corral

Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity and the snow had made him ~non compos

vocis~. The adversity consisted of the stranded San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second

story work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like other

professional palmists, every time he worked the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the

Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised that he had moved out into

the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred

blue language he dilated upon the subject of snow; for Etienne was Parisborn and loved the snow with the

"Complete, castiron, pussyfooted, blank... blank!" said Ross, and followed suit.

The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and insistently from behind that frozen

visage I got two messages (via the M. A. M wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation

against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a

Frenchman, I concluded I had the message wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright eyes, you don't really mean

Dagoes, do you?" and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: "Yes." Then I reflected that to

George all foreigners were probably "Dagoes." I had once known another camp cook who had thought

Mons., Sig., and Millie (TransMississippi for Mlle.) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel

I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne stood at the window, Fletcherizing his

finger nails and shrieking and moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable as the

snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my

collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test of flatontheback. A test that comes

However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I could lie

and watch the human interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us

"I shall go crazy in this abominable, meeserrhable place!" was Etienne's constant prediction.

"Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before," said Ross, over and over. He sat by the other window, hour

after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on

one side of him, and "Roughing It," "The Jumping Frog," and "Life on the Mississippi" on the other. For

every chapter he lit a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time, gave him a recurrent premonition of cramps,

gastritis, smoker's colic or whatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals.

To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still's AmberColored U. S. A. Colic Cure.

"Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before. Positive fact." Ross slammed "Roughing It"

on the floor. "When you're snowbound thisaway you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to bring out

all your cussedness. You read a man's poor, pitiful attempts to be funny and it makes you so nervous you

At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out of his mouth long enough to exclaim:

"Humor! Humor at such a time as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable"

These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God makes the planets and we make the

platters neat." By that time, the ranchhouse meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction,

not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me or Etienne.

After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder ached wretchedly, and with halfclosed

Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift step, he moved to the door, threw it open, and

The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb. With careful precision he prodded

something. Then he made one careful step into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under the arms as

he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. Another step inside the door, which he shut methodically behind him,

He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under that Orphic suspense until,

Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, schoolteacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow.

Age, yumyum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for

grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through

treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the leaves; her

mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer track. General

Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture stalks into the ranch house. Three men, a

cook, a pretty young woman all snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I never did,

with women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the effect upon Ross and Etienne Girod.

Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he discarded the Pittsburg scandals. Also, he

Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from a little tube of grease Hongroise in his

vest pocket. He combed it with a little aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it with

manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous

change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted,

twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, could not have equalled

Ross's method of advance was brusque, domineering. "Little woman," he said, "you're welcome here!"and

with what he thought subtle double meaning"welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow or no snow."

Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen berries creeping into the birch bark. She

looked around hurriedly as if seeking escape. But there was none, save the kitchen and the room allotted her.

"Mees Adams, I was almost to perislhdieof monotony w'en your fair and beautiful face appear in thees

meeserrhable house." I opened my starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger,

the Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the schoolteacher's. "I am Frenchyou

seetemperamentalnervous! I cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; buta woman

comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 'rahs and a tiger. "What a difference! All is light and gay; ever'ting

smile w'en you smile. You have 'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel your 'eart. So!" He

laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he suddenly snatched at the schoolteacher's own

"Dinner," remarked George. He was standing just behind the Frenchman's ear. His eyes looked straight into

the schoolteacher's eyes. After thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, frozen maelstrom

Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I must get ready for dinner," she said brightly, and went into her

Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned away, I waited until a propitious time

He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. "Yeller hided, unwashed, palmreadin' skunk," he

said under his breath. "I'll shoot him full o' holes if he don't watch outtalkin' that way to my wife!"

The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pentup emotions, oh, best buyers of best

Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne

The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of soughtafter, was feverish. Lately escaped from the agony and

long torture of the white cold, where for hours Nature had kept the little schoolteacher's vision locked in and

turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine introspections she had gone. Now,

suddenly cast among men, instead of finding relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew into other

discomforts. Even in her own room she could hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. "I'll blow you full

o' holes!" shouted Ross. "Witnesses," shrieked Etienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She could not

have known the previous harassed condition of the men, fretting under indoor conditions. All she knew was,

that where she had expected the frank freemasonry of the West, she found the subtle tangle of two men's

She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me. They also came over to help nurse. This

combination aroused such a natural state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to retire.

Once she did manage to whisper: "I am so worried here. I don't know what to do."

To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a hunchsavant and that the Eighth House

under this sign, the Moon being in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right.

But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that perhaps I might have to recast her

Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who had been sitting taciturn and morose,

He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and perfect spot where Miss Adams'

forehead met the neat part in her fragrant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I was in a

"Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough for a man like me to see you bothered this way.

You"gulp"you have been alone in this world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time

like this you need a protector the worst kinda protector who would take a threering delight in smashing

the saffroncolored kisser off of any yellerskinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem. Hem. I

am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on my life without the"gulp"sweet

radiance"gulp"of a woman around the house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when

I am pretty near locoed from havin' to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight I welcomed your first

appearance in this here shack. Since then I have been packed jam full of more different kinds of feelings,

Miss Adams made a useless movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck firm. "I don't want to annoy you,

Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes to that you'll have to be annoyed. And I'll have to have my say. This

palmticklin' slob of a Frenchman ought to be kicked off the place and if you'll say the word, off he goes. But

I don't want to do the wrong thing. You've got to show a preference. I'm gettin' around to the point,

MissMiss Willie, in my own brick fashion. I've stood about all I can stand these last two days and

somethin's got to happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheepherder. Miss Willie"he

lassooed her hand by main force"just say the word. You need somebody to take your part all your life

He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big platter of pork and beans. Then somberly the

potatoes. Then profoundly the biscuits. "I have been revolving it in my mind. There ain't no use waitin' any

>From my excellent vantagepoint on the couch I watched the progress of that meal. Ross, muddled,

glowering, disappointed; Etienne, eternally blandishing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking at

her food, hesitant about answering questions, almost hysterical; now and then the solid, flitting shadow of the

I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes before it struck the hour. I know, therefore, the

slow freight of Anticipation. For I have awakened at three in the morning, heard the clock gurgle, and waited

those three minutes for the three strokes I knew were to come. ~Alors~. In Ross's ranch house that night the

Etienne began it after supper. Miss Aclams had suddenly displayed a lively interest in the kitchen layout and I

could see her in there, chatting brightly at Georgenot with himthe while he ducked his head and rattled

"My fren'," said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud from his cigarette and patting Ross lightly on the shoulder

with a bediamonded hand which, hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, "I see I mus' be frank with

you. Firs', because we are rivals; second, because you take these matters so serious. II am Frenchman. I

love the women" he threw back his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an unsavory kiss toward the

kitchen. "It is, I suppose, a trait of my nation. All Frenchmen love the womenpretty women. Now, look:

Here I am!" He spread out his arms. "Cold outside! I detes' the colll! Snow! I abominate the

meesserrhable snow! Two men! This" pointing to me"an' this!" Pointing to' Ross. "I am distracted!

For two whole days I stan' at the window an' tear my 'air! I am nervous, upset, prrrofoun'ly distress inside

my 'ead! An' suddenlybe'old! A woman, a nice, pretty, charming, innocen' young woman! I, naturally,

rejoice. I become myself againgay, light'earted, "appy. I address myself to mademoiselle; it passes the

time. That, m'sieu', is wot the women are forpass the time! Entertainmentlike the music, like the wine!

"They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen'. To play with thees woman, follow her through her

humor, pursue herah! that is the mos' delightful way to sen' the hours about their business."

Ross banged the table. "Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!" he roared. "I object to your pursuin' anything or

anybody in my house. Now, you listen to me, you" He picked up the box of stogies and used it on the table

as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the attention of the girl in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the

room. "I don't know anything about your French ways of lovemakin' an' I don't care. In my section of the

country, it's the best man wins. And I'm the best man here, and don't you forget it! This girl's goin' to be mine.

There ain't g'oing to be any playing, or philandering, or palm reading about it. I've made up my mind I'll have

this girl, and that settles it. My word is the law in this neck o' the woods. She's mine, and as soon as she says

she's mine, you pull out." The box made one final, tremendous punctuation point.

Etienne's bravado was unruffled. "Ah! that is no way to win a woman," he smiled, easily. "I make prophecy

you will never win 'er that way. No. Not thees woman. She mus' be played along an' then keessed, this

charming, delicious little creature. One kees! An' then you 'ave her." Again he displayed his unpleasant teeth.

As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that the hand which fell upon Etienne's

amorous lips was not his own. There was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and

I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost absentminded affair. I had thought the

Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then he began rolling down his sleeves.

"You'd better get your things on, Miss, and we'll get out of here," he decided. "Wrap up warm."

I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her cloak, sweater, and hat.

George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around and faced his employer. "Bein' a

camp cook, I ain't overburdened with hosses," George enlightened us. "Therefore, I am going to try to

For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. "If it's for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you

The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my words. "No," he replied. "It's for mine and

the young lady's purposes, and we'll go only three milesto Hicksville. Now let me tell you somethin',

Ross." Suddenly I was confronted with the cook's chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot

through the room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. "You're nutty. That's what's

the matter with you. You can't stand the snow. You're getting nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and this

Dago"he jerked a thumb at the halfdead Frenchman in the corner"has got you to the point where I

thought I better horn in. I got to revolving it around in my mind and I seen if somethin' wasn't done, and done

soon, there'd be murder around here and maybe" his head gave an imperceptible list toward the girl's

He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep any one else from speaking. Then he plowed slowly

through the drift of his ideas. "About this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think

about women. If she hadn't happened in here durin' this here snow, you'd never have given two thoughts to

the whole woman question. Likewise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin' out, this here

whole business 'll clear out of your head and you won't think of a skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just

because o' this snow here, don't forget you're living in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And

you're the same man, too. Now, what's the use o' getting all snarled up over four days of stickin' in the house?

That there's what I been revolvin' in my mind and this here's the decision I've come to."

He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle my horse.

Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then he began: "I've a durn good notion,

"You're wrong, mister. That ain't a durned good notion you've got. It's durned bad. Look here!" He pointed

steadily out of doors until we were both forced to follow his finger. "You're in here for more'n a week yet."

After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: "Can you cook?" Then at me: "Can you cook?"

There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of a foodless week.

"If you just use hoss sense," concluded George, "and don't go for to hurt my feelin's, all I want to do is to take

this young gal down to Hicksville; and then I'll head back here and cook fer you."

The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very serious and quiet. The horse because

he knew what he had before him in that weather; the girl because of what she had left behind.

Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing. "My God, man!" I cried, "aren't you

George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his gloves, put his foot in the stirrup, and turned

As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and

"Snow is my last name," said George. He swung into the saddle and they started cautiously out into the

darkening swirl of fresh new currency just issuing from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep her place, clung

I brought three things away from Ross Curtis's ranch houseyes, four. One was the appreciation of snow,

which I have so humbly tried here to render; (2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra careful; (3) was a

memory of what it is to eat very extremely bad food for a week; and (4) was the cause of (3) a little note

delivered at the end of the week and handpainted in blue pencil on a sheet of meat paper.

"I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. Snow say no, George. I been revolvin' it in my mind;